Google Serves 25 Percent of North American Internet Traffic | Hacker News Reader

Google Serves 25 Percent of North American Internet Traffic

wired.com

86 pointsLibertatea23 comments

I think Wired is using this "Google Sets New Internet Record" [1] as the source material. I think the far more interesting quote is "60% of all Internet end devices/users exchange traffic with Google servers during the course of an average day" [1].

[1] http://www.deepfield.net/2013/07/google-sets-new-internet-re...

I'm surprised it's only 60%. With the prevalence of Google Analytics, I assumed it would be much higher.

Read the entire paragraph:

"An amazing 60% of all Internet end devices/users exchange traffic with Google servers during the course of an average day. This analysis includes computers and mobile device as well as hundreds of varieties game consoles, home media appliances, and other embedded devices (Google’s device share is much larger if we look only at computers and mobile devices)."[1] (SIC, Emphasis Added)

[1]http://www.deepfield.net/2013/07/google-sets-new-internet-re...

60% huh? It sounds like it's time for anti-trust case to me, hey DoJ.

Wow. 60%! That's amazing.

The lion’s share of it comes from YouTube.

Hardly anything surprising that YouTube is the source of most traffic. Take out YouTube, I suspect they'd be closer to 5%. (Didn't really see a breakdown anywhere in the article)

I work at Deepfield.net, the company linked to in the article and we find YouTube takes up 78-80% of Google traffic. Google still has a several other larger services.

Doesn't that make the parent's comment about correct? 80% off 25% is 5%, so it matches pretty well.

FWIW, stories like this are one of the reasons Google maintains a high level of secrecy. While there I asked Urs Hoezle, "Why not brag about it? Isn't that good?" and his response was "It just makes us a target." And he is/was correct, if your enemies don't know the extent of your strength they can't adequately prepare and attack, if your friends don't know the extent of your strength they have no reason to be afraid of you.

That said, this article is based on observing peering traffic -- "It’s impossible to get a total picture of the internet, so Deepfield’s numbers are a best guess based on the traffic flowing through its internet service provider partners." -- and you know they have their own fiber in Kansas City (heck they even bought into some transoceanic cables). You need only look at their quarterly earning reports on their capital investment to get a sense of what we're talking about. And unlike the Government, when Google spends $4B/year on something they get a lot of bang for their bucks.

Facebook has also invested in submarine fiber systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Pacific_Gateway

Would you use a Facebook ISP? How about a Facebook mobile operator? Facebook handset? Remember: Apple partnered with Motorola to make the Rokr device and Facebook partnered with HTC to make the 'First' device (both of which were flops), so it is so far-fetched?

Facebook makes no consumer hardware, but neither did Google until recently.

No. The DeepField data includes data from backbone routers (ie not just peering) and observations of GGC server traffic.

I never understood Google's desire to keep things like GGC tight to the chest. Another search engine isn't going to win or lose based upon their ability to run caching http proxies in ISP data centers.

True but I always felt that GGC telegraphed Google's move into richer data streams (like video, and potentially telephony) so having the information out there would cause people to understand they were a competitor not a partner. Looking at it from the outside, both the challenges in the Google TV project and the Apple TV project stem, in part, by vigorous roadblocking on the part of the content providers. So you partner with Xfinity for the last might, great, but you have the capability to pump better content over that pipe than they do? Not so great.

The bottom line seems to be the less you know the harder it is to guess what they can and cannot do.

Putting a GGC server at your ISP is one step closer to having you as a direct customer (like in Kansas and other Google Fiber test markets), and cutting out the middle-man entirely (in this case, your current ISP).

Makes me think of Google Fiber project - NSA to every home :)

The rest must be be torrents.

Read this as "Google Now" the product, please lowercase the now at least.

Yes, I did the same thing. Case is such a useful disambiguator in English... all the more reason to hate title case.

"... all the more reason to hate title case."

So just because a company uses an ambiguous term as a product name ("Now"), that's the final nail in the coffin of title case? Seems a bit silly to me...

> So just because a company uses an ambiguous term as a product name ("Now"), that's the final nail in the coffin of title case?

There's nothing ambiguous about the product name. Title case is the source of the ambiguity (and its not specific to particular product names, it happens anywhere where a title is an English sentence in which obliteration of the normal capitalization distinctions creates ambiguity.)

And that's the problem with title case -- it obstructs, rather than facilitates, clear communication.

I always assume the iPhone articles here are about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_iPhone

I strongly agree with ScottWhigham in this matter. If anything, I have a problem with the fact that every word im the English Language gets assigned to multiple IT products, movies, books etc. which inevitably leads to confusion.

The fact that the title of the HN submission was changed to remove the word "now" shows that the word was also completely superfluous in the headline. Aren't headlines assumed to be contemporary, to be about "now?"

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